Opinion

  Megan McArdle Since I last wrote about it, Aetna’s withdrawal from the Obamacare exchanges has ginned up even more drama. Jeff Young and Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post published a letter in which Aetna told the Justice Department that it would reduce its exchange participation unless Justice allowed the merger with Humana to go through. This has naturally ...

  justin fox Children and teenagers in the world’s developed countries have a more than 50 percent chance of living past 100. By the early 2100s, in other words, “being a centenarian will no longer be a rarity. In fact, it will be the norm.” That’s from Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott’s book, “The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in ...

  We are such an anxiety-ridden society that we worry about problems that haven’t happened, and, almost certainly, won’t. Robots are an apt example. Even McKinsey and Co., the high-powered management consulting firm, professes to be concerned. We imagine hordes of robots destroying jobs, leaving millions of middle-class families without work and income. Relax. Unless we adopt self-destructive policies, this ...

  The world is braced for the discovery of a fifth fundamental force of nature — the four known ones being electromagnetism, gravity, and strong and weak nuclear forces — that subverts the so-called standard model of particle physics. Given the lackluster outlook for global growth, maybe economics needs a similar revolution. Quantitative easing’s failure to quash the threat of ...

  Economists regularly point out that the U.S. has recovered from the recession of 2007 to 2009 much more strongly than other countries. If only it were so. True, the U.S. stands out if one looks only at gross domestic product. For example, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pointed out recently that U.S. GDP has expanded by more ...

  The Federal Reserve is playing it safe amid the looming uncertainty. That’s what the minutes of its last meeting on July 26-27 reflect. The Fed officials are still divided over interest-rate hike, even though New York Fed chief William Dudley flagged the prospect of an increase as soon as September. However, the minutes clearly show that the policy makers ...

  On Wednesday, Indonesia celebrated its Independence Day with a bang — blowing up several Chinese boats that had been caught fishing illegally in its waters and impounded. China doesn’t dispute Indonesia’s territorial claims, but Chinese fishermen have more pressing concerns. According to reports in Chinese state media this week, overfishing and pollution have so depleted China’s own fishery resources ...

  How many times have you heard someone say that the Federal Reserve’s asset-purchase program known as quantitative easing was ineffective? At least, that’s what I keep hearing from the usual pundits arguing their case on television and in print. I have my own suspicions that monetary stimulus works well enough to thaw frozen credit markets, as it did amid ...

  Nowadays, if you’re a smart college graduate, Silicon Valley and its tech-startup scene is the hot place to be. But 10 years ago, it seemed like everyone with a brain and big ambitions wanted to go to Wall Street. The worlds of investment banking and trading were a golden ladder to the good life. The numbers tell the tale. ...

  The fight against the IS may get the headlines. But it’s the military threats from Russia and China that most worry top Pentagon officials — and are driving a new arms race to deter these great-power rivals. This question of how to deal with Russian and Chinese military advances has gotten almost no attention in the 2016 presidential campaign. ...